It was a mainstay of Jim Crow segregation: for 100 years after the Civil War, Southern white Democrats kept eligible blacks from voting with poll taxes, literacy tests and property requirements. Starting in the 1960s, the U.S. Supreme Court declared these assaults on the heart of American democracy unconstitutional.

Now, with the help of a 2008 Supreme Court decision, Crawford vs. Marion County (Indiana) Election Board, white Republicans in some areas will keep eligible blacks from voting by requiring driver's licenses. Not only is this new-fangled discrimination constitutional, it's spreading.

GOP proponents of the move say they are merely trying to reduce voter fraud. But while occasional efforts to stuff ballot boxes through phony absentee voting still surface, the incidence of individual vote fraudâvoting when you aren't eligibleâis virtually non-existent, as "The Truth About Vote Fraud," a study by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, clearly shows. In other words, the problem Republicans claim they want to combat with increased ID requirements doesn't exist. Meanwhile, those ID hurdles facing individuals do nothing to stop the organized insiders who still try to game the system.

The motive here is political, not racial. Republicans aren't bigots like the Jim Crow segregationists. But they know that increased turnout in poor, black neighborhoods is good for Democrats. In that sense, the effort to suppress voting still amounts to the practical equivalent of racism.

In Crawford, the court upheld an Indiana law essentially requiring a passport or driver's license in order to vote. But more than two thirds of Indiana adults have no passports and nearly 15 percent have no driver's licenses. These eligible voters, disproportionately African-American, will need to take a bus or catch a ride from a friend down to the motor vehicles bureau to make sure they obtain a nondriver photo ID. Otherwise, they cannot vote in Indiana this year.

To get an idea of how many African-Americans nationwide lack driver's licenses, recall Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when thousands were stranded without transportation. "Crawford Republicans" could make the old "Jim Crow Democrats" look like pikers when it comes to voter suppression.

Consider Wisconsin, a swing state. Republicans officials there are suing to enforce a "no match, no vote" provision in state regulations, where voters must not only show a photo ID, but establish that it matches the name and number in the Department of Motor Vehicles or Social Security Administration database. (Democrats are resisting the suit.) These lists are riddled with errors in every state, as the Brennan Center has proven in its report, "Restoring the Right to Vote."

How error prone? Florida wrongly purged tens of thousands of law-abiding, mostly Democratic, voters from the rolls in 2000, claiming they were felons. (This, among other things, cost Al Gore the presidency). Even after the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and worldwide attention, the Florida software is still flawed. It requires only an 80 percent match to the name of a convicted felon. "So if there's a murderous John Peterson, the software disenfranchises everyone named John Peters," Andrew Hacker writes in a recent New York Review of Books.

Voters caught in these snafus can have their rights restored but not if they fail to straighten things out before Election Day. Otherwise they are granted "provisional ballots" that are sometimes counted and sometimes not. Even obtaining a provisional ballot can require an appearance in front of a judge in some states. Faced with the hassle, most voters just give up.

The ability of actual felons to get their right to vote back varies by state. It's especially hard for felons to vote in Virginia; a bit easier in Pennsylvania and Michigan. (Other countries are far more generous to ex-convicts, figuring that having paid their debt to society they should be allowed to vote again.)

All of this would seem to favor John McCain over Barack Obama this year, but some voting-rights trends are pointing in the opposite direction.

In Ohio, where the governor and secretary of state changed in 2006 from Republican to Democrat, a new law allows voters to register to vote and fill out an absentee ballot at the same time between Sept. 30 and Oct. 6. This will mean a week of furious campaigning and early voting in a key state.

Advantage Obama. With 470,000 students enrolled in Ohio's public colleges and universities (and nine out of 10 are Ohio residents), expect a bumper crop of young voters.

The combination of voter suppression and early voting make turnout predictions perilous. And without knowing turnout, most polling is deeply flawed.

So about the only thing we know for sure this year is that with the Crawford decision we are seeing a return to the days when one political party saw a huge advantage in preventing as many poor people as possible from voting. That's understandable politically, but also un-American.

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Now, with the help of a 2008 Supreme Court decision, Crawford vs. Marion County (Indiana) Election Board, white Republicans in some areas will keep eligible blacks from voting by requiring driver's licenses. Not only is this new-fangled discrimination constitutional, it's spreading.

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So what is stopping blacks from getting a ID?

I'm pretty sure the laws allow ID cards if they can not drive.

Unless they have a criminal record or are wanted by the cops. In that case they should not be allowed to vote anyway.

Nothing wrong with this picture.

The retard democrats should be spending time on locating the rigged voting machines than on nonsense like this.

Democrat elite and their "high road" mentality is why the republicans will continue to win elections.

first, if everyone is required to have a ID, there is nothing wrong with that.

second, the last 2 times democrats lost, was because the voting machines were inordinately making miscounts in favor of republican candidates.

back to my point. they should spend time on getting the machines certified. not the voters.

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You must live on a farm.

I've been working in Chicago elections for 20 years. For eight years it was my elective responsibility as a Committeeman to seat 150 election judges. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find Republican judges in an African-American ward? It can't be done. Those precincts then wind up with no Republicans at all working the table. That's why this ID thing is important. Here's how it works.

Let's say your voting precinct has 500 registered voters. Your names appear on a sheet and as you enter the polling place a registrar checks off your name and you sign the book. As it gets later in the day the election judges have a good estimate of turnout. Maybe they figure it'll be 75% so they know that around 125 registered voters won't be showing up. The judges then call the Wards Democrat office and give names of non-voters. The Dem committeeman then turns to his henchmen giving them the list of names and instructions to hit a few polling places as those missing voters. Even WITH ID cards it won't make a difference because in some of these Black precincts it's the judges themselves forging the signatures and voting. In my 2004 Congress race I lost a precinct in a retirement home by something like 311-8. Granted I was an unpopular candidate but a number like that can't hardly be random when other like places I only lost 4-1.

I'm surprised they let you have eight votes. Three of them were probably dead so any challenges would show fraud in you favor. My community cracks me up.

I have one friend who says he votes democrat because his family votes democrat. He says in the last election he had no idea who was on the ballot nor what the candidate vowed to do. He says he just looked for democrat. This, is truly common!

Quote from Pa(b)st Prime:

You must live on a farm.

I've been working in Chicago elections for 20 years. For eight years it was my elective responsibility as a Committeeman to seat 150 election judges. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find Republican judges in an African-American ward? It can't be done. Those precincts then wind up with no Republicans at all working the table. That's why this ID thing is important. Here's how it works.

Let's say your voting precinct has 500 registered voters. Your names appear on a sheet and as you enter the polling place a registrar checks off your name and you sign the book. As it gets later in the day the election judges have a good estimate of turnout. Maybe they figure it'll be 75% so they know that around 125 registered voters won't be showing up. The judges then call the Wards Democrat office and give names of non-voters. The Dem committeeman then turns to his henchmen giving them the list of names and instructions to hit a few polling places as those missing voters. Even WITH ID cards it won't make a difference because in some of these Black precincts it's the judges themselves forging the signatures and voting. In my 2004 Congress race I lost a precinct in a retirement home by something like 311-8. Granted I was an unpopular candidate but a number like that can't hardly be random when other like places I only lost 4-1.

Now, with the help of a 2008 Supreme Court decision, Crawford vs. Marion County (Indiana) Election Board, white Republicans in some areas will keep eligible blacks from voting by requiring driver's licenses. Not only is this new-fangled discrimination constitutional, it's spreading.

More...

Requiring a drivers license hardly seems like an onerous requirement. LOL. It seems like a person should show at least a modicum of responsibility in order to vote. Too lazy to get a license, then I'd say they aren't responsible enough to cast a vote.

Requiring a drivers license hardly seems like an onerous requirement. LOL. It seems like a person should show at least a modicum of responsibility in order to vote. Too lazy to get a license, then I'd say they aren't responsible enough to cast a vote.